mptonshire. A manor-house built
about 1350. The dormer windows and addition to the left are of much
later date.]

17. =The Black Death. 1348.=--In the midst of this luxurious society
arrived, in =1348=, a terrible plague which had been sweeping over
Asia and Europe, and which in modern times has been styled the Black
Death. No plague known to history was so destructive of life. Half of
the population certainly perished, and some think that the number of
those who died must be reckoned at two-thirds.

[Illustration: Ploughing.]

[Illustration: Harrowing. A boy slinging stones at the birds.]

[Illustration: Breaking the clods with mallets.]

[Illustration: Cutting weeds.]

[Illustration: Reaping.]

18. =The Statute of Labourers. 1351.=--This enormous destruction of
life could not fail to have important results on the economic
condition of the country. The process of substituting money rents for
labour service, which had begun some generations before (see p. 168),
had become very general at the accession of Edward III. so that the
demesne land which the lord kept in his own hands was on most estates
cultivated by hired labour. Now, when at least half of the labourers
had disappeared, those who remained, having less competition to fear,
demanded higher wages, whilst at the same time the price of the
produce of the soil was the same or less than it had been before. The
question affected not merely the great lords but the smaller gentry
as well. The House of Commons, which was filled with the smaller
gentry and the well-to-do townsmen--who were also employers of
labour--was therefore as eager as the House of Lords to keep down
wages. In =1351= the Statute of Labourers was passed, fixing a scale
of wages at the rates which had been paid before the Black Death, and
ordering punishments to be inflicted on those who demanded more. It is
not necessary to suppose that the legislators had any tyrannical
intentions. For ages all matters relating to agriculture had been
fixed by custom; and the labourers were outrageously violating custom.
Custom, however, here found itself in opposition to the forces of
nature, and though the statute was often renewed, with increasing
penalties, it was difficult to secure obedience to it in the teeth of
the opposition of the labourers. The chief result of the statute was
that it introduced an element of discord between two classes of
society.

[Illustration: Stacking corn.]

[Illustratio